In 1996 Malaysian NGOs hosted an international event known as the second Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor (APCET-2). The first conference was held in Manila in 1994. The Kuala Lumpur meeting was shocked the world when a mob of Barisan Nasional Youth disrupted the event violently. One hundred or so participants were later arrested. All the foreign participants were deported and 56 local activists detained by the police.
33 of us took a civil suit against the police and the government of Malaysia for wrongful detention. The case started its hearing in 6 March 2006 last year.
The case was heard before Justice Wan Adnan Muhamad, who was rather humorous throughout the trial. He probably found the case quite amusing.
I was called to the witness stand on 19 July last year. After I completed my testimony, I was cross-examined the defendants federal counsel Kamaludin Mohd Said. Prior to my testimony, 3 other witnesses—Dr Sanusi, Dr Syed Husin and Premesh Chandran—have taken the stand.
My cross examination continued on 21 and 22 November 2006. Kamaludin was replaced by another federal counsel Morhaji Selamat who was assisting him in this trial. I find the defendant counsels were totally ill-prepared in their defense. Kamaludin was rather nervous and cautious in my cross-examination. But this Morhaji Selamat was even worse.
The counsel did not seem to have any direction or strategy. He went around the circle with a lot of tedious questions. He was even repeating himself. So much so that the judge requested him to cut short some of the questions.
His questions were also fragmented and incoherent. Anyhow, I was relaxed on the stand, and enjoyed seeing my opponent suffered.
The trial resumed on 21 February. It was the fourth day of Chinese New Year. So I had to cut short my break to return to KL.
This round, Irene Xavier took the stand. She was the chair of Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor (PSWS) then. She was cross-examined by Morhaji for 2 days.
The line of argument by the federal counsel Morhaji was implying that the organizers knew the government objected to the APCET-2 conference thus deliberately hid the purpose of the conference from the authorities. His proof: The hotel was booked under PSWS instead of APCET
When Morhaji made repeated attempts to harp on this, even the judge lost his patience. We then saw a rare episode of exchanges between the judge and the federal counsel. The judge reminded Morhaji not to repeat on known facts.
Morhaji argued that he was trying to establish that the organizers were deliberately defying the government by going ahead with the conference. The judge asked, “if government disagreed with the meeting, does it make the meeting illegal?â€
He directed the federal counsel to concentrate on whether the police acted legally. He asked: “was it true that meeting in a hotel was a private function and requires no permit from the police?â€
Morhaji: “yes, it is true. Meeting in private area needs no police permit.â€
The judge: “by government objecting to the meeting, does it make a legal meeting illegal?†(adakah ini sebabkan yang halal jadi haram?)
Morhaji: “no, I didn’t say it became illegal.â€
At the end, the defendants’ counsel conceded that our APCET was not an illegal meeting.
On 22 February, while the defendants’ counsel continued to cross-examine Irene, the judge hinted to both sides to seek compromise in order to save cost.
He requested us to cut down the number of witnesses since they would be repeating the same factual details. The judge also suggested the counsels of the plaintiffs to formulate the quantum of our compensation claim more realistically, so that a settlement may be reached.
Despite that, Morhaji was dragging the process with droning questions. The judge and our counsels were exhausted by his repetition. When he announced that he was putting forward the final question, the judge jested: “I’m so relieved that this has finally come, I was beginning to wonder you will ever end the questioning.â€
Near to 16:00hr, Irene stood down from the witness stand. The court fixed 20-21 June, 15-16 Auguest and 19-20 September for the next hearing. The judge hope that with these few dates, we would be able to complete the case.
All these look incredibly positive for us.
